Time & Space are Real BeingsTime is a Man Space is a WomanWilliam Blake, A Vision of the Last Judgement (quoted in WJT Mitchell, Iconology, p.95)

If material has existed during any period, it has equally been in existence during any portion of that period. In other words, dividing the time does not divide the material. But in respect to space, dividing the volume does divide the material. If material exists throughout a volume, there will be less of that material distributed through any definite half of that volume. (Whitehead)

Bergson considered the intellectual "spatialization" of things to be a distortion of nature.

If Newton reduced the physical, objective, universe and Kant the metaphysical, subjective universe to the categories of space and time, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing performed the same service for the intermediate word of signs and artistic media. (Mitchell, p. 96) Lessing established a basic distinction between the spatial arts (such as painting.) and the temporal arts (such as poetry)-- the means or signs one"using forms and colors in space, the other articulate sounds in time." (Laocoön p.78) For Lessing, "These signs must indisputably bear a suitable relation to the thing signified.". Thus the true subjects of painting are bodies, i.e. objects or parts of objects that exist in space, and the true subjects of poetry are actions, that follow one another.

What are the ideological dimensions of the controversies over the categories of space and time?

The question of the priority of space over time is posed as a political one by authors such as Ed Soja (Postmodern Geographies) or Michel Serres. According to Michel Serres, philosophy represses the problem of spaces in favor of linear time because "time is the most immediate and simplest aesthetic projection of ordered structure. With time, the aesthetic is in order and those in political power are quite pleased. Spaces are repressed because they are possibly, better yet, certainly, disorderly...Reason, the political powers that be, prefer order rather than disorder, time rather than space, history rather than multiplicities." (Feux et signaux de brume, p. 164, quoted in Harari and Bell Introduction to Hermes)

WRITINGS

This hypertext document is an dictionary of concepts deriving from two main sources: The first is the literature of criticism, literary studies, and the humanities. The second is the literature of science, and contemporary interpretations of the sciences.

My primary interest is to explore the borrowings and polyvalent meanings of specific terms – in order to map out some of the convergences, overlaps, shifting perspectives, and outright conflicts between contemporary criticism and the sciences.

The content list below is organized accordingly: the first major heading is Theory, and the second is Technoscience.